The Evolution of Blemishes
by knicknack
Summary: Tsunade considers what it means to be female, blemished, and beautiful.


**The Evolution of Blemishes**

A/N: I'm not sure if Tsunade can dispel the jutsu that makes her look young at will. If not, please suspend your disbelief for the duration of this fic. Thanks for reading.

As Tsunade grew older, she found it increasingly difficult to be a woman. It was easy enough as a child. One could frolic undisturbed by the going ons of those too immersed in 'grown up' matters to care what one small child was concerning herself with. Of course, many things appeared easier when viewed through the nostalgic, watery eyes of an old woman. Perhaps what seemed so basic to the woman of now was in fact, quite distressing to the child of then. It was arguable that it was easier still to be a young woman. She was, by that point, very interested in the matters of 'grown ups.' Of course, she had left this juvenile terminology to rot in the dusty archives of her memory, nestled comfortably between the well rehearsed words to nursery rhymes and the rules to games she no longer played. As the years progressed, even these would be lost under the crushing weight of new material, of new memories. Yes, it was good to be young. It was better to be young and female. But truly, it was best to be a young kunoichi. All it took was a glance from under dark, mascara-heavy lashes and a pout from pink, glossy lips to have men at her feet, figuratively. It would require but a well placed knee or a chakra-infused fist to make the statement literal. She missed those perks, certainly. But most of all, she missed the perfect, unblemished skin.

It was a child's notion, really, to think that beauty was measured in positives. Of course, to a child, every notion that could be measured was measured in positives. The game of good looks is one in which one must mark down negative attributes to come to the end product. The closer your score was to zero, the more desirable you were. It was rather like golf. She found herself engaging in this whenever she met a new person. A mole? Negative one. The owners of said moles alway referred to these little imperfections as beauty marks. Tsunade knew beauty when she saw it, and the interruption of otherwise healthy skin by an eye catching brown splotch was not beauty. Pimples? Negative three? Wrinkles? Well, when Tsunade came across wrinkles, the game was over. The elderly were never beautiful. They had forfeited the game long ago.

As a child, she had thought men were the crueler sex. They towered over her, voices low and menacing. Women were nice. They would hug her and tell her how tall she's gotten, their skin soft and sweet smelling. Men preferred to shake her hand, their eyes locked on hers, judging her by the strength of her returning handshake. This view would change completely as she grew into her identity. Men did not approve of her job because she was not a man. Women did not approve of her job because she was a woman. When informed of her hemophobia, men wondered how she could call herself a kunoichi. Women wondered how she could call herself a woman. Women and blood were synonymous. If you had not, or would not, bleed once a month in your life, you were not female. Blood was life. Blood was death. Blood was woman. To bleed was normal. And yet, was blood not an imperfection in and of itself? Blood was meant to stay in the confines of one's veins. If it escaped, something was wrong. It left behind wounds and cuts and scars. Blood was a blemish. Women were a blemish. Negative one.

On the rare occasion she could escape Shizune and venture out into the shopping district of Konoha, she could feel the eyes of women on her back. The eyes could be traced to the comfortable housewives of the market place. Plain, doughy women, they had long ago stopped styling their hair or applying makeup. They had done their duty. They married men who no longer touched them, and bore a few children who viewed them as little more than nuisances. They tended to the house, and hugged little girls who had grown taller since the last time they saw them. These women had experienced all being a woman had to offer. They did not approve of Tsunade. Tsunade was strange to them. Here was a childless woman who had never married. Here was a woman who had killed more people than she had cooked meals. Here was a woman who despite being close in age to them, could use forces they did not understand to make herself appear young. Here was a sannin. Here was a hokage. Here was a woman.

She wondered, when the pain of her choices grew sharp, if she wouldn't have been happier if she was not born into the kunoichi lifestyle. Tsunade tried to imagine herself as a domestic woman. She would have married a blurry-faces man who worked a nine to five job, and had a few equally blurry-faced children. She would have stretch marks and wrinkles. If she punched the ground, it would not shake. Her fist would throb, and her eyes would tear from the pain. Her face would be free by any glamour besides the occasional lipstick. Her face would not be carved into the side of a mountain. Her equally unimportant brother would occasionally come over for dinner, bringing his pretty young wife along. She would, every once in a while, hear of the two great sannin, Jiraiya and Orochimaru, and those names would not invoke feelings of affection and pain somewhere deep in her stomach. No titles would precede and follow the name Tsunade besides the appropriate honourific. In short, she would be miserable. Tsunade had felt a great deal of pain in her life, but that came hand in hand with a great deal of joy. She was an extraordinary woman with an extraordinary past. She had seen sights so beautiful she would not dare foul their memory with mere words, and sights so terrible she would not associate innocent words with their filth. She had saved more lives than she could possibly remember, and taken too many to ever forget. Tsunade was descended from greatness, but it was her own accomplishments that would earn her the honour and hassle that came with the title hokage. She had met some of the most wonderful people anyone could ever meet, and met those who shared that opinion with her at their funerals. These people were blemished. Some of them had blemishes that took the form of red lines extending downwards from their eyes. Some had blemishes in the form of whisker marks carved into their cheeks. All of them were her precious people. She wouldn't trade their memories for all the blissful ignorance in the world.

That whole statement about missing her perfect, unblemished skin? Total bullshit. Who gives half a flying fuck about skin when you're happy? You weren't checking your pores when you had two teammates who had your back. Pimples weren't the end of the world when you had a sensei who offered you pearls of wisdom that didn't mean a thing to you. So you were wrinkled. So what. You had an annoying little brother who talked your ear off about wanting to be hokage. Blemishes meant very little to you when you were with your kind-hearted lover. It's when all of these factors are gone that you started to look towards yourself with critical eyes. You could not save them. YOU could not save them. A perfect girl could have. A perfect, pretty girl with a strong heart and a good head on her shoulders would be surrounded by precious people. Oh, what do you know? Blackheads. Shame. There goes sensei protecting a village you could not save. What on Earth is that blue mark on your forehead? Guess you really don't love your little brother. Are those wrinkles? Bye, bye, Dan. Nice knowing you. Because when you've lost everyone you love, all you have left is yourself. Mirrors no longer show a happy, beautiful young woman. They pick out every possible flaw, and lay them out side by side, deepening the self-hate and disgust of a tired old woman with nothing better to do than stare into dusty mirrors.

But she had always had Jiraiya. Her oldest friend, her greatest comrade, her stupid teammate. Jiraiya the young boy with an aversion to large breasts. Jiraiya the man of a thousand perverted words. Jiraiya the sannin, Jiraiya the pervert, Jiraiya the sage. Her almost lover, her constant source of comfort. Jiraiya was a man who's words were either completely unthought out letters strung together forming what could be considered words which then rearranged themselves into passable sentences, or brilliant gems disguised by common letters. She had never quite figured that out. Jiraiya the idiot, Jiraiya the fool. Stupid, stupid Jiraiya, who died a hero, and left behind a broken woman. Jiraiya the bastard who died with no regrets. If their situations were reversed, Tsunade would not have died. Jiraiya would take her drinking the day she was suppose to leave on a mission, get her drunk as hell, and gently push her on the path of a long, winding rant that would continue long past her destined departure date. She would wake up the next morning with a headache that could split mountains, and a note on her bedside table that casually mentioned that Jiraiya had taken it upon himself to go in her place. Tsunade would roll over, throw an arm over her head, and curse both his arrogance and her own stupidity. Try as she might, she couldn't repress the smile or the thought that she was an incredibly lucky woman to know him. It had happened often enough in their history together that she no longer bothered to appear indignant. Ero-sennin Jiraiya. Jiraiya of the wrinkles, Jiraiya of the mole, Jiraiya of the white hair. The stupid, wonderful boy with the face of an old man. Blemished Jiraiya who couldn't care less about his own faults. Her Jiraiya.

It had been a long, difficult day, one in which she had cast her bloodshot eyes to the locked liquor cabinet every three point six seven seconds. Approximately. Not that she had begun a counting game or anything. She was a grown woman, that was absurd. Eventually, Tsunade had just collapsed onto her dusty desk. If she wasn't so well endowed, and her face actually met the desk, she would likely have a dust mask. She stood up suddenly, startling the fat man who's monologue about rising corn prices she had interrupted. She needed some fresh air desperately. There were two things Konoha had in abundance: good men who died too soon, and fields. She liked this one. It was a field of wild daisies. She didn't know exactly why she was there, but she knew that she was needed no where else, and that was a good a reason as any. Tsunade had never let Jiraiya see her with her hair down. It was a defence mechanism of sorts. Whenever they got too close to crossing the line between friends and lovers, she would remind herself that Jiraiya had never seen her completely naked or unguarded. Only her lovers ever saw her without her hair up, or tied in two pigtails, like it was now. She had never explained that to Jiraiya, whenever he asked her to let down her hair, usually throwing in the occasional Rapunzel reference. But now...now there was nothing to fear. They would never be lovers, no matter how hard she wanted it, if she wanted it at all. He would never see her true face, devoid of the jutsu which kept her looking young. Serves the stupid bastard right. Tsunade did two things as she thought this. First, she released the jutsu. The moisture that kept her skin tight receded, leaving behind deep cracks and crevices. Her hair grew brittle, and all traces of the former honey colour disappeared. Her lips grew chapped behind the shiny pink gloss she had applied. Secondly, Tsunade undid her hair. She immediately remembered why she kept it up, especially on windy days. The strands followed the frenzied path of the wind, seemingly drawn to her lip gloss. Her hair was sticky with the gloss as it whipped around her face, reducing the visibility. She couldn't help it. She laughed She bent over, her breasts heaving with the force of her laughter. It was the laugh of a young girl too stupid to appreciate what she had. It was the laugh of a woman with everything to lose. It was the laugh of an old hag with all the knowledge of the world. She stood there, her hair flying every which way, blemished, ugly, and female. Laughing.

She had never been more beautiful.


End file.
